We need to quit propping them up and build our own.
This week, school privatizer and genocide enabler Cory Booker blathered about Trump for 25 hours, and The New York Times acted like the Democrats just defeated the Confederacy in a land war. Kamala immediately emailed me asking for $5; Cory had the decency to wait a few days.
While Cory burnishes his 2028 candidacy, for-profit wars keep rolling, the US blows up children on the other side of the world, public services are being gutted, AIPAC defines free speech in America, and the ruling class controls all branches of government while conning the public that they live in a democracy.
What do regular Americans want from their government and society? Enough money to live decently, accessible healthcare without bankruptcy, affordable groceries, affordable housing, a college education without debt peonage, a little money for a rainy day, a vacation every so often, peace in the world so they don’t have to donate their kids to wars and defense contractors’ profits, and a dignified retirement. Maybe clean water and air too but why push it?
Here’s what they don’t want and didn’t ask for: worldwide batshit crazy tariffs and global economic meltdown, $9-a-dozen eggs, a South African oligarch with a chain saw, the post office handed over to FedEx so it costs $7 to mail a card to grandma, decades of offshoring union jobs and factories to jack corporate profits (that was Clinton and NAFTA), genocide, war with Russia, war with Iran, war with China, World War III, nuclear holocaust, low taxes for oligarchs, social security cuts, health insurer grifting off sick people, a “party of the people” that can’t offer shit because it’s bought and paid for by the ruling class.
Meanwhile AOC and Bernie, the so-called resistance, rally shell-shocked Democrats by offering the crowds this direction: pressure your congressional reps to vote no on Medicaid cuts and billionaire tax cuts. Pressure your congressional reps. Let that radical proposal sink in.
Do you know this guy? 1992 third-party candidate Ross Perot with one of his graphs showing the US deficit—an approach so simple and successful that candidates haven’t shut about the deficit for 30 years. Perot also took on corporate trade policy entitled the North American Free Trade Agreement, which helped siphon US manufacturing out of the country for cheap labor. Perot didn’t win, but he garnered enough votes to ensure both parties never again allowed a 3rd party candidate in a presidential debate.
Imagine a candidate or officeholder showing voters a graph illustrating the massive excess cost of the US for-profit healthcare system. The cost of a cancer diagnosis and the time involved fighting with insurers. The cost of one bombing raid on the Houthis and one Houthi-destroyed reaper drone (at $30 million each). Comparing current college costs with the baby boomers’, back when states funded public higher education, and no one needed loans. Showing any damn thing that explains why regular people and their kids struggle and the 1% live in jaw-dropping, generation-spanning luxury.
Democrats can’t and won’t address people this directly. They could never use a simple bar chart to show people how they’re being ripped off by insurers, Wall Street, Pharma, or who’s profiting from never-ending war. Neither could they show who’s suffering from never-ending war, who’s making piles of money from student loan debt, what happens when public services are awarded to private contractors, or where the public money went that had been used to fund state colleges. Given the Dems donor-dictated paralysis, Trump becomes the gift that keeps on giving—good for 25-hour rants that promise nothing and deliver nothing all while Trump lays waste to the civil service and the global economy.
AIPAC, oligarchs, tech bros, Wall Street wizards, and corporate raiders own both parties supported by the same assortment of think tank neocons and war mongers. Once bought and elected, the fraudsters, grifters, and climbers put in their time bloviating and bombing, then head for the revolving door from government to serious cash. None of them give a shit about the public, and they never will.
Whipped by the downward spiral of choosing between two gangs of grifting suits and oligarchs, we have to start asking how low can we sink before we take back our time, money, labor and resources propping up the so-called party of the people. Prolonging the Democrat Party’s life comes at the cost of our own. A new party and an actual movement can be built, but we have turn off the spigot of $ billions of dollars in donations and union dues, as well as the endless months of door knocking. Then we could invest in creating something like a real American labor party.
You’re going to hear all of this is impossible from people who have given their careers to the Party. In our unions, for example, we shouldn’t listen to staff and leadership or anyone else who tells you that forking over donations is “building power.” They’re not building anything for us, but instead transferring the money, power, and credibility of regular people and essential workers to their politician friends. Look where it’s gotten us.
Let’s cut off these historical losses and losers, and let the Democratic Party finally die. No need to follow it into the grave. The after party from its funeral could be the place we start building real, long overdue power.